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POPE, ARTHUR UPHAM

POPE, ARTHUR UPHAM (1881-1969), American educator, author, and ardent advocate of Persian art and architecture. From the 1920s until his death in 1969 Pope introduced and promoted Persian art and culture through publications, exhibitions, congresses, lectures and graduate-level courses. His best-known work is A Survey of Persian Art (q.v.), published in six massive and well-illustrated volumes by Oxford University Press in 1938-39. Pope was the driving force behind five international congresses held between 1926 and 1968. He organized exhibitions of Persian art some of which were held concurrently with the congresses. From 1929 to 1939 Pope led expeditions to Iran to photograph and record architectural monuments, thereby providing students and scholars of the subject with thousands of photographs and much detailed information. In 1930 he organized and for 24 years was director of the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology, later the Asia Institute. He also served as advisor and purveyor of works of Persian art to museums and collectors.

Pope was born on February 7, 1881 in Phenix, Rhode Island where his father Louis Pope was a minister in a local church. He was raised in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Descended from English Puritans who had settled in the Boston area in 1634 Pope remained proud of his New England roots throughout his long life.

After completing his high school education at Worcester Academy in Massachusetts, Pope studied philosophy at Brown University (BA, 1904; MA, 1906) in Providence, Rhode Island. There he was first a student of and subsequently a colleague and friend of philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn. Already a performance-level pianist Pope elected to pursue a career in philosophy rather than classical music but always kept a piano near at hand. He embarked on PhD studies at Brown, Cornell and Harvard but was unable to complete his thesis due to illness. In June 1909 he married his first wife, fellow Brown graduate Bertha Louise Clark.

While at Brown Pope organized his first exhibition of Oriental carpets in the galleries of the Rhode Island School of Design. His interest in Oriental carpets had been sparked by youthful visits to the Boston home of an aunt. He felt challenged to learn about carpets and supplemented the scant literature then available by having lengthy discussions with dealers and collectors.

Pope stayed on at Brown teaching philosophy until 1911 when he moved to California to take up a position in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he remained until December 1917, specializing in aesthetics. Shortly after arriving in Berkeley he met Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and the first woman Regent of the University of California. When Pope learned that Mrs. Hearst collected Oriental carpets he persuaded her to lend examples to show to his students of aesthetics. Subsequently, in the autumn of 1914, Pope organized an exhibition of Mrs. Hearst’s carpets at the university.

It was in one of his philosophy classes at Berkeley that Arthur Upham Pope first met the brilliant mathematics student Phyllis Ackerman. So taken was she by his masterful exposition of the subject that she switched from the study of mathematics to philosophy. She became an assistant in the Department of Philosophy and went on to complete a PhD in 1917. Not only did she share Pope’s passion for his subject but also took up some of the political causes he espoused. In addition in 1916 they collaborated on the catalogue of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst’s collection for an exhibition at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.

Unaware of Bertha Pope’s part in the failure of their marriage, other faculty members were quick to criticize Pope when he became involved with Phyllis Ackerman. The student-teacher romance drew the censure of colleagues and resulted in his effectively being drummed out of the university in late 1917. Pope went east and taught for the first few months of 1918 at Amherst where Alexander Meiklejohn was president but it was not long before his career as professor of philosophy was over.

In spring 1918 Pope became involved in the war effort and moved to Washington, DC where he undertook work related to officer promotions for the Personnel Division of the War Department’s General Staff. Having developed a keen interest in morale, he began lecturing and writing on the subject. Long a supporter of the underdog, after World War I Pope organized and became executive secretary of the League of Oppressed Peoples. He made speaking tours in favor of the Irish Free State throughout the United States and in Canada. It was also at this time that he made the transition from university professor to art advisor.

Excellent remuneration from an initial foray into the world of the art expert permitted Pope to engage in several months of intensive study and then set up in business in New York City. He and Phyllis Ackerman married in 1920 and she joined him in the art consultancy business. Among their clients were John D. Rockefeller II, Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Horace Havemeyer, the Otto Kahns, William Randolph Hearst, Calouste Gulbenkian, and George Hewitt Myers. In the early 1920s Pope was made Advisory Curator of Mohammedan Art to the Chicago Art Institute and Advisor in Persian Art to the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. He put to good use his expertise in this relatively new field that was not yet being taught in American universities.

Among his first publications were a series of articles on carpets that appeared in journals such as Arts and Decoration and International Studio between June 1922 and May 1923. In January 1926 the Art Club of Chicago published his Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Early Oriental Carpets from Persia, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Egypt and Spain, January 1926. Further articles on carpets appeared in Art News in late 1926.

In April 1923 Arthur Upham Pope had been appointed director of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco, and Phyllis Ackerman had been named as associate director. The museum was a gift to the city from Park Commissioner and sugar heir Adolph Spreckels. It was his brash wife Alma, in charge of purchasing works of art for the new museum, who invited Pope and Ackerman to join her on a buying trip to Paris. As a result of their disapproval of her erratic behavior and rash purchases, Alma Spreckels fired them. This was their first trip to Europe and despite the setback of their dismissal from the museum they used the opportunity to visit many important museums and collections and to make valuable contacts.

It was at about this time that Pope felt the urge to experience firsthand the culture that had produced the carpets, ceramics, architecture and other arts about which he was becoming increasingly knowledgeable and passionate. With the financial backing and in the company of a trustee-patron of the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur Upham Pope made his first trip to Iran (Persia as it was then known) in the spring of 1925. On April 22 he was asked to make a speech to then prime minister Reza Khan. His remarks, on the past and future of Persian art and especially its architecture, which he greatly admired, were translated by ʿIssā Ṣadiq, later a minister of education who was to become a lifelong friend and supporter. Pope wanted the Persians to appreciate the wonders of their architecture from earlier centuries and to draw on it as inspiration for modern buildings (rather than inappropriate European design). This meeting with the future Shah resulted in Reza Khan’s taking a personal interest in the restoration of important structures in Isfahan and, most importantly, in granting Pope permission to enter key mosques to study and photograph their architecture. Hitherto non-Muslims, Westerners in particular, had been banned from entering a functioning religious building, and he would face awkward, even dangerous moments. This turn of events allowed him to make perhaps his greatest contribution to our knowledge of Iran, the publication of its vitally important but virtually unknown religious architecture.

Subsequently Pope’s influence on Reza Shah Pahlavi resulted in the construction of new buildings such as Qaṣr-e Marmar (the Marble Palace) in Tehran with a tiled dome in the style of Isfahan’s Shaikh Loṭfollāh Mosque, the main office of Bānk-e Melli-e Irān (q.v. The National Bank of Iran) and Tehran police headquarters in Achaemenid style, and Muze-ye Irān-e Bāstān (Museum of Ancient Iran) in the style of Sasanian-era Ctesiphon.

In 1926 the United States Sesquicentennial Exposition was held in Philadelphia. Pope had been made Temporary or Special Commissioner for Persia. In collaboration with a Philadelphia architect he designed the Persia Pavilion, based on the Masjed-e Shah (King’s Mosque) in Isfahan, which won a gold medal. He organized an exhibit of Persian fine arts in the Palace of Fine Arts at the Sesquicentennial Exposition and a subsequent exhibition of Persian art at Pennsylvania Museum of Art. In his own words, “it was the first serious assemblage anywhere devoted exclusively to Persian art, in contrast to other exhibits which had presented Persian art only as part of inclusive collections covering the whole of Islamic art.” The International Conference on Oriental Art (original name of what later became the International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology) took place in November 1926 and was the first congress devoted exclusively to Persian art. (Four more would be organized by Pope over the next 40 years.)

1927 and 1928 saw Pope and Ackerman back in California working on architectural projects. Pope decorated the Fairmont Hotel penthouse home of a San Francisco banker in a sumptuous Persian court theme. During the first half of 1927 Pope and Ackerman collaborated on the interior decoration of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. In November 1927 Pope was named consulting architect to the San Francisco Opera House. In June 1928 he carried out the redecoration of the Woodland Theatre in Hillsborough, California. Also in 1928 he published a plan for the reorganization of San Francisco’s museums.

Conceived by Pope and colleagues in 1928, the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology was incorporated as a membership corporation in the state of New York in October 1930. The Institute’s charter authorized it “to encourage and extend an appreciation of Persian art in its various forms by promoting research and assisting scholars, organizing and assisting archaeological expeditions and excavations, organizing and assisting exhibitions of Persian art and congresses, both national and international, publishing books and other material, and assisting in the conservation of ancient Persian monuments.”

Among the research projects upon which the Institute embarked in the 1930s was a Documentary Survey. This consisted of searching a wide range of manuscripts and published works for information on Persian art, and classifying and combining that information in order to improve on and systematize existing knowledge of Persia’s artistic history. A corpus of drawings of Persian design was assembled in order to be able to trace the history and development of various styles and designs, with dated pieces used to develop a time line. Preparations were made for a number of archaeological ground surveys to be carried out in Iran. The idea was that they would produce a clearer understanding of the range and extension of Iranian archaeology. The need for ethnological and anthropological research was pointed out along with the value of undertaking joint ethnological-archaeological work. A collection of both contemporary and historic maps was developed and new maps were also prepared. An index of Persian monuments, or Architectural Index, was compiled. The Institute staff conducted an Architectural Survey in Iran. Initially a photographic survey it was then expanded to include detailed architectural recording of monuments. Much of the information gathered was published in A Survey of Persian Art in 1938-39.

Pope had begun the Architectural Survey when he returned to Persia in the spring of 1929 with a camera he had purchased en route in Cairo. In spite of the fact that he knew very little about photography when he began the survey Pope became a top-notch photographer. He overcame problems with equipment, difficulties with calculation of exposure times in dimly lit interiors, heat, dust, situations of bright sunshine and deep shadows, opposition by religious leaders to the entry into mosques by non-Muslims, and the requirement that he must process his negatives before leaving Persia. Pope very graphically describes his photographic work in Persia in his article “Killed for Photographing a Fountain! Camera as a Record of World-Famous Persian Architecture,” Photography (London), vol. 5, no. 49 (September 1936), (reprinted in his biography Surveyors of Persian Art).

During the nine seasons of the Architectural Survey, which took place from 1929 through 1939, he and his colleagues traveled the length and breadth of the country and also to neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan recording monuments. During the course of these always well organized and, as years went by, increasingly well-equipped expeditions approximately 10,000 photographs were taken of historic monuments all over the country. Pope and his colleagues produced a truly outstanding corpus of photographs of Persian architecture. These photographs are perhaps his greatest contribution to the field. Specialists agree that many of them have not been surpassed in succeeding years.

Colleagues recruited to join Pope on his bone-jarring drives over the rough gravel roads and dirt tracks of 1930s Persia included epigrapher Faraj-Allāh Baḏl who transcribed and translated inscriptions on buildings and tombs, architects Eric Schroeder and Donald Wilber who planned and drew dozens of pre-Islamic and Islamic monuments, Robert Byron who both photographed and undertook architectural recording of monuments in Persia and Afghanistan, photographer Stephen Nyman who in addition to photographing monuments also filmed, for the first time, all the processes involved in designing and weaving Persian carpets, and architectural recorder Mary Crane who prepared the Architectural Index that was to prove so useful during the 1937 and 1939 seasons of the Architectural Survey. It was the first time the majority of the monuments had been photographed, planned and published. Reports on these expeditions were published in the Institute’s Bulletin.

Pope was a key organizer of the highly successful International Exhibition of Persian Art that opened at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in January 1931. The exhibits consisted of more than 2,500 items from 90 institutions and individuals in 27 countries. Many of the loans from museums, dealers and private collectors had been negotiated by Pope who was renowned for his powers of persuasion. Among the prize exhibits were the Persian crown jewels. Through contacts in Iran and Britain Pope was able to arrange for the jewels and other Persian national treasures to be flown by a fleet of four Junkers aircraft from Tehran to Ābādān where a British naval vessel was waiting to transport them from the Persian Gulf to London. During a visit to Isfahan Pope had arranged for a one-third-scale model of the Great Portal of the Masjed-e Shah to be constructed, then transported overland to London and erected in the Royal Academy. For the majority of the more than 225,000 visitors the exhibition was their introduction to Persian art. Among the items displayed in London for the first time were Luristan bronzes which had caused a sensation when they appeared on the European art market in 1929. Pope had been among the first to publish articles on these bronzes. In addition to his numerous articles on Persian art that appeared in the months prior to and during the exhibition, Pope also published his first book on the subject, An Introduction to Persian Art since the Seventh Century A.D.

The second International Congress, held concurrently with the exhibition, was sponsored by the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology in collaboration with British colleagues.

From 1929 Pope was involved in arranging for American archaeological excavations to take place in Persia. Pope and Dr. Frederick Wulsin played a part in the wording and passage of the 1930 Persian antiquities and excavations law that granted equal rights to all nations for scholarly exploration in Persia thereby preventing a French monopoly. Pope was not an excavator but arranged for trained field archaeologists such as Dr. Erich Schmidt, Dr. Frederick R. Wulsin, and Louis Charles Watelin to carry out surveys and excavations at Astarābād, Tepe Hissar, Kish, Ray, and Sorḵ Dom in Luristan. With Pope’s encouragement Dr. Erich Schmidt carried out the first aerial survey of Luristan in the autumn of 1935. Funds for these projects were provided by American museums such as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Pennsylvania Museum of Art in Philadelphia and by wealthy patrons including Mrs. William Boyce Thompson, Mrs. Christian R. Holmes and her son Mr. Carl Holmes. One of the most faithful friends and sponsors of the work of the Institute was Ada Small Moore.

From 1932 through 1936 the American Institute for Persian (Iranian) Art and Archaeology arranged for Pope’s photographs of Persian architecture to be exhibited in art and architecture institutes and museums in cities such as New York, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, London, Copenhagen, Chicago, San Francisco, Jerusalem and Leningrad. The large-scale photographic enlargements, made possible by the precision of Pope’s negatives, created a sensation everywhere they were shown.

An exceedingly articulate and eloquent speaker, Pope lectured on Persian art and architecture in a number of countries. For instance, having been appointed to Harvard University’s Cercle Français lectureship he toured the universities of France in 1934-35 lecturing on “Persian Contributions to the Beginnings of Gothic Architecture.” Those who heard him hold forth on Persian carpets never forgot the experience. He could stimulate the eye and stir the imagination in a manner rarely found in the academic world or elsewhere.

In September 1935 Pope and Ackerman took part in the Third International Congress of Persian Art and Archaeology that was held in Leningrad and Moscow and which he had helped to organize. The concurrent exhibition consisted of 25,000 items displayed in 84 galleries in the Hermitage. Included in the exhibition were some 600 photographic enlargements, plus plans and drawings from Pope’s architectural survey of Persia.

Pope first had the idea of publishing a survey of Persian art in 1926. His original intention was that it should be a catalogue of the exhibitions he had organized in Philadelphia. He subsequently decided to expand the book to be a systematic and comprehensive account of everything then known about Persian art. Pope’s original plan had been for about 400 pages of text and over 250 illustrations but as a result of research trips to Persia starting in 1929 and visits to scholars, museums and collections in various European countries the scope of the survey rapidly expanded. When A Survey of Persian Art finally appeared in 1938-1939 it was a massive six volumes and consisted of 2,817 lavishly printed pages of text (115 chapters in 69 sections), almost 1,500 plates of 3,500 photographs, 193 color plates and 1,966 text illustrations. Most of the leading scholars of the day contributed to the Survey. Including Pope and Ackerman there were 72 contributors from 16 different countries. By dint of masterful editing which included the ironing out of discrepancies, the correlation of different points of view and the adoption of a common style plus the insertion of thousands of cross-references Pope and Ackerman achieved a unified treatment of the subject matter.

Being a pioneer work the Survey had its defects. By the end of the twentieth century its 60-year-old text had been largely superseded. However at the time of its publication it represented significant advances in the knowledge of Persian art then in existence. The Survey was the product of Pope’s vision, imagination, and contacts coupled with Phyllis Ackerman’s scholarly conscience, organizing ability and behind the scenes hard work. Neither of them could have achieved on his or her own what they accomplished together. Pope always acknowledged that Phyllis Ackerman deserved much credit for all of his accomplishments. In the case of the Survey it was she who bore the brunt of the editing, cross-referencing and proofreading while Pope was in Persia on expeditions, visiting contributing authors in various European capitals, or busy soliciting funds from sponsors.

The outbreak of World War II in Europe brought to an end the annual expeditions to Persia. Fortunately many of the photographs taken and much of the information gathered during the Architectural Survey had been published in A Survey of Persian Art in 1938-1939 before the Luftwaffe’s bombs destroyed the London premises of Oxford University Press. After having spent 15 years dividing his time between Europe, the Middle East and New York, Pope returned to the United States, settled in New York and poured his prodigious energies into developing the Institute into a first-rate teaching institution.

One of the first things Pope did was to make arrangements for work permits to be issued to several important European scholars whose careers had been disrupted by developments in Europe. Thus it was that Bernhard Geiger, Robert von Heine-Geldern, Gustav von Grunebaum, William Haas, Leo Oppenheim, and Léo Bronstein joined the faculty of the Institute. In the case of those scholars who were Jewish and/or dissidents it would not be an exaggeration to say that Pope saved their lives.

In the late 1930s what had originally been the American Institute for Persian (Iranian) Archaeology was expanded into the Asia Institute(s). They consisted of the Iranian Institute (created in 1938 as the School for Iranian Studies), the School for Asiatic Studies (opened in 1939), and the Institute of Asiatic Economics. By the late 1940s the Asia Institute had an exceptional faculty and was offering courses that were not taught anywhere else in the United States. It was a unique cultural institution for its time. In 1946 it was issued with a charter to grant degrees. The first class of MA students graduated in 1948. The student body of the Institute was as varied as its curriculum. There were businessmen, government officials, members of the military, foreign students from Asian countries, and scholars intending to do research or to go into teaching.

In 1940 Pope and Ackerman had organized—in record time—an exhibition entitled “Six Thousand Years of Persian Art.” Unlike the 1931 London exhibition and the exhibition held in Leningrad in 1935, the New York exhibition consisted entirely of exhibits on loan from American museums, galleries and collectors. The 2,800 items in the show included magnificent carpets, textiles, sculptures, ceramics, metal artifacts, and paintings. Phyllis Ackerman prepared the show’s 350-page catalogue.

From early 1941, before America’s entry into World War II, Pope once again became interested in the subjects of morale and psychological warfare. He began writing letters and articles and making radio broadcasts on the topics. He became chairman of the Committee for National Morale, members of which included university presidents, political figures, prominent businessmen, sociologists and anthropologists. Pope also communicated with President and Mrs. Roosevelt about the work of the committee.

During the 1940s, at a time when it was not popular to do so, Pope championed the cause of Russia. He was a trustee of the American-Russian Institute and a vice-president of the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship (from 1943 to 1949). In 1943 he published a biography of Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinoff that received mixed reviews. Due to American paranoia about Communism Pope’s sympathies were to prove costly to the Institute. In April 1949 Life magazine published a full page of photographs and an article describing individuals they considered to be leaders of the non-card-carrying Communist Left. Pope was among them. Some Institute patrons withdrew their support.

In autumn 1950 the Institute was offering more than 200 courses, including 35 Asian languages, taught by a prestigious faculty of over 40 full- and part-time lecturers. However, due to ever increasing operating costs, the deaths of some key sponsors, Pope’s resignation as chancellor in 1952 due in large part to ill health, and the failure of his nominated successors to secure its continuation, by autumn 1953 the Institute had virtually ceased to exist. During its relatively brief existence the Institute had played a vital role in the teaching of Asian subjects in the United States and had helped to inform a generation of American and foreign scholars, including many from Iran.

In July 1954, after the demise of the Institute, Pope was summoned to testify before the United States Senate’s Subversive Activities Control Board chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. At the time the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship was opposing a Government petition that it be required to register as a Communist front group. Pope denied ever having heard any discussion of Communism or members of the Communist party at council meetings of the organization. He was also questioned about his many visits to Russia.

Following his retirement as chancellor of the Asia Institute in 1952 at age 71 Pope continued to be active in the fields of Persian art and Asian culture. Between 1952 and his death in 1969 he published more than 20 articles and papers, including pieces on Persepolis as a ritual city and contributions to a memorial volume for Ernst Diez and Festschrifts in honor of KAC Creswell and Ernst Kühnel. His 288-page monograph on Persian architecture appeared in 1965.

From his home in Connecticut Pope helped organize the 4th International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology that took place in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington in spring 1960. He also played an essential part in the 1964 reissue in Japan of A Survey of Persian Art. The reissue was organized by Jay Gluck, his former student and assistant at the Asia Institute in New York.

At the invitation of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Pope and Ackerman made a State Visit to Iran in November 1964. Pope was presented with an honorary PhD at the University of Tehran. For his services to Iran Pope had previously been awarded the Tāj (Crown) Order and the Homāyun (Royal) Order by the Shah. In addition the Ministry of Education had decorated him with the ʿElmi (Scientific) Medallion and the Society for the Preservation of National Monuments had elected him an associate member.

During their State Visit the couple were invited to come out of retirement, move to Iran and revive the Asia Institute as a research institution affiliated with Pahlavi University in Shiraz. Prince Šahrām, a nephew of the Shah, deeded over Nārenjestān Palace in Shiraz for use by the Asia Institute.

Pope moved to Iran in April 1966 and was soon settled in Shiraz with Ackerman and a collection of cats, without which the couple were never to be seen. Jay and Sumi Gluck had moved from Japan to Shiraz to assist with the reorganization of the Asia Institute. Together they drafted a program of activities for the institute and drew up plans for the restoration and utilization of Nārenjestān. They also prepared a small format, budget edition of Persian Architecture and made plans for other publications. Arrangements were made for architectural recording to be undertaken in the Isfahan bazaar. Several visiting scholars made use of the Institute’s library and archives.

In Shiraz the 86-year-old Pope and his colleagues worked tirelessly on the program for the 5th International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology that was held in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz in April 1968 and attended by 270 scholars from 26 countries. As president of the congress Pope gave a stirring opening address in Tehran.

Following the inauguration of the restored Nārenjestān in April 1969 Pope became director emeritus of the Asia Institute and Richard N. Frye was named as his successor. Pope was looking forward to directing a study of the shrine of Imam Reżā in Mašhad at the time of his death on September 3, 1969 at the age of 88. Following a state funeral Pope was buried in Isfahan. A mausoleum designed in Seljuq style by his architect friend Moḥsen Foruḡi was subsequently erected over Pope’s grave in a park near the Ḵᵛāju Bridge and is the final resting place of both Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (FIGURE 1).

Arthur Upham Pope was a charismatic yet controversial figure. While admired by most of his contemporaries for his aesthetic sensibilities, his energy, his enthusiasm, and for the many contributions and activities described above, more recent opinion has been critical of Pope’s financial dealings including the sale of works of art to museums and important collectors, activities which he felt, having exhausted his personal means, were necessary in order to sponsor the field trips, underwrite the Survey of Persian Art, keep the underfunded Institute afloat, etc. Particularly in the early years it was through him that many important works found their way into public and private collections. Often dealers placed wares with Pope, aware that his recommendations bore weight. However some pieces were later found to be clever fakes and this has cast a shadow on both Pope and Ackerman’s reputations. There is disagreement as to the degree of Pope’s awareness of the forgeries. Many pieces required years of study or sophisticated technical analyses not available in his day to establish their lack of authenticity.

By using all the means at his disposal Pope played a major part in introducing Persian art to the West. In the United States his role has been compared to that of Ernest Fenellosa and the art of Japan and to Bernard Berenson and his work with Italian painting. Pope’s accomplishments form a long list and are extremely varied, but for most of his life he had one pressing desire to which he devoted his prodigious energies: to bring the art of Persia to a larger audience, including the Persians themselves, and to present it in all its magnificence.